ReDress the Future: on sustainable solutions and holding the fashion industry to account

In conversation with Mikaela Loach

We talk a lot about broken systems and this sort of implies that the harm and exploitation is there by accident – like things have ‘gone wrong’. But when it comes to the fashion industry, the harm is very much deliberate. It is completely acceptable to these brands and to the industry as a whole and it has been built this way on purpose.

We need to acknowledge the fact that it isn’t people who are living on the poverty line who are propping up the fast fashion industry. They’re not the ones who have made fast fashion a multi-billion dollar industry. It is actually people who have privilege and could be choosing different options, who are propping up the fashion industry. It is to do with people buying too much and over consuming.

The term carbon footprint was actually popularised by fossil fuel company BP, which says a lot about big corporations shifting the narrative and the blame. Why would a fossil fuel company want to popularise the idea of a carbon footprint? It’s because it takes the responsibility and the onus for the harm that is being caused away from them and onto individuals, and it assumes the same amount of agency between these two entities.

ReDress the Future: on sustainable solutions and holding the fashion industry to account